The Farce
by a puzzling conundrum
Summary: [Spoilers for Editor in Chief] For the student council president, there was something rather puzzling about the SOS Brigade  and something almost unsettling about its vice commander.


**The Farce**

He has no illusions about how absurd that job is - not that he'd mind that much, since the profits he draws from it are all but absurd. He knows that an edge on university exams and better grades with less work are things some students would kill for, after all. This is the reason why he doesn't really complain - being a student council president is, despite what it might seem, not that demanding of a post and to him, it's in some way amusing how Koizumi always talks about it with such deliberation and seriousness.

He is firmly convinced it serves a higher purpose (which makes the president to wonder if the glasses his colleague made him wear serve a higher purpose as well) and speaks about it with an odd form of reverence. And it's the same reverence that he uses while talking about that Suzumiya girl who unconsciously started this whole surreal affair in the first place.

Koizumi says she created that little brigade of hers in order to make her life more exciting: and he likes to tell him about it, occasionally going into detail about what they do after lessons end. The president can't deny that this clashes a little with the image he has of his colleague, who'd seem the last person to enjoy discussing fervently his schoolmates' daily life and not metaphysical theories. Yet, not having many better things to do, he listens to Koizumi's stories somewhere between a meeting with the teachers and inspecting a club. And the main conclusion the president comes to after hearing them out is that their group, organization - or whatever it one could call it - somehow seems oddly mundane.

For being created to break a normal highschooler's tedious routine, there's a surprising order and regularity to its doings. He listens to Koizumi quite attentively, yet his"reports" always have a certain subtle pattern that the presidents almost reflexively notices.

There's always that girl reading in the corner, the one he had to question about her duties as the Literature Club president. There's always that obnoxious Suzumiya, who apparently has the habit of harassing one of her fellow club members - and does, indeed, come up with completely unreasonable ideas, yet with a regularity that could be almost measured, and the president could bet that's what Koizumi does. And of course, there's also Koizumi himself, who always plays board games with that friend of his he mentions surprisingly often - yet the president from seeing these two together a few times has the impression said "friend" would rather reluctantly call himself as such.

Their clubroom, he thinks, is almost like a stage carefully set up when the actors continue to play their parts, occasionally complaining about their script or the settings they've been thrown in, but still not willing to change them the slightest. Sometimes, he briefly thinks that they might be playing roles they set for themselves - and to him, Koizumi is the most striking example of that.

The president has the impression that it's much easier to see through an act if one is acting himself - something that he noticed while playing his role of an calculating villain, designed to match Suzumiya's image. He can't deny it's tiresome - so he's even grateful for the moments when Koizumi is around, these being one of the few times when he can return to his former self. Yet, oddly enough, his colleague never seems to do that. There's always something that strikes him as slightly odd, exaggerated about the way he behaves - maybe slightly unsettling, even. A sentence completed by an overly dramatic flourish, an unusual choice of words that no one would utter without a script at hand - there is a certain calculated theatricalness that pervades his demeanour, far from blatantly obvious, yet slightly visible if one would look close enough.

Why Suzumiya didn't notice that yet is a mystery to him: but he must admit that Koizumi's facade is impressive, elaborate in the slightest details, and one can only wonder how much it has in common with reality or if its "owner" uses it out of his free will. Despite that, he sporadically doubts his colleague's insightfulness and commitment not being an act - yet sometimes, he can't help the thought that he might just have been fooled by his courtesy and convenient half-truths.

"You do all of that for the Agency and... that girl, right?" he asks Koizumi once, both skeptical and curious despite knowing well the most likely answer to this question.

"This is correct." the boy replies as he expected, with a smile so charmingly nonchalant that the president can't help but think it must have been carefully practiced.

--the end

_Author's notes: And this fic makes it rather obvious that I like the student council president quite a lot. He's an interesting character, yet sadly he appears very sporadically, so he's not too easy to descibe. Still, he probably isn't the main character of this fic. 8D; What made me write this was me noticing how_ regular_ in an odd way the Brigade was - and besides, writing about it from an "outsider"'s point of view was something I always wanted to try. And besides, I'm fascinated by Itsuki's "act"... or maybe the lack thereof? Either way, this guy is really interesting to analyze._


End file.
